2016 ends on victory for democracy

Islamabad

After precariously living through threats of ouster in 2016, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif passed the year with rare patience and tolerance despite excruciating provocations, with his principal challengers and conspirators having been sidelined in the end.

The threats stood dissipated one by one to a great chagrin of their architects and to the great fulfillment of the government. The perpetual plotters have been left to lick their wounds after constant failures to dislodge the premier. The whole year was marred with intense intrigues and stratagems to get rid of him.

Even before the sun of the New Year rises, Nawaz Sharif has become more confident and comfortable with his resolve to take on his protagonists touching new highs, eagerly waiting for the 2018 general elections to teach them a lesson. The year that started off with a shaky, shuddering Nawaz Sharif closed with a powerful prime minister.

The main threat of disruption throughout the year kept emerging from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which maneuvered to spawn chaos and anarchy at the behest of others as it never acted as a free agent since it became a powerful force in October 2011. It’s no secret that its ascendance was beholden to invisible hands and it always acted on their orders.

To its shock, the PTI failed to oust the prime minister in 2016, a bid it launched a few months after the 2013 elections. There was no good news for it in the outgoing year. The street power it has always been bragging, and for sometime rightly so, finally stood nailed in the face of stringent measures of the administrative machinery when it was obstructed to lock down the federal capital on Nov 2. This was its last attempt to displace the government, and its first-ever high profile attempted protest that the government inhibited with the use of force and was successful in annihilating it.

It was not the puncturing of just one protest, but it was the breaking of the will of a perennial demagogue that had not let the government rule in peace even for a short hiatus since the 2013 polls. After the botched up lockdown, the PTI has been cut to size as far as its endless stirring up of streets is concerned. This way, the threat posed by it to the prime minister, which made him pass several sleepless nights, was taken care of aptly.

The PTI is now in no position to fuel mayhem in streets as the government has come to the conclusion that it is not impossible to handle the party by using the wherewithal at the disposal of the administration if its protest threats go beyond the four corners of law. After this letdown, the PTI is now more focused on day-to-day matters to slam the government, which keep cropping up. The latest issue that it has attracted its attention is the report of Supreme Court Justice Qazi Faez Isa on the Quetta carnage.

Although Gen Raheel Sharif had made it public in the beginning of the year that he would go home on the due date of his retirement, suspicions and doubts always persisted about his declaration because of the unprecedentedly high-watt publicity that he kept getting even till the last day in office. The Nawaz Sharif government always felt threatened by his direct intervention, mainly due to the powerful campaign being relentlessly carried out by a battalion of jobless enthusiasts, who kept painting themselves as the voice of the powers that be. Throughout the year, the regime remained panicky and jumpy because of the fact that a parallel government was being run from Rawalpindi the intensity of which was never so great during the tenure of any civilian dispensation. This was the first time in the history of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) that a lieutenant general presided over it which showed the enhanced importance given to this wing.

However, this threat evaporated after Raheel Sharif’s superannuation and his replacement by pro-democracy General Qamar Javed Bajwa in a highly smooth transition, which should always be like this. After a long time, an army chief hanged up his hat after three-year tenure.

The third threat that was also quite serious at the very outset came with a bang from the figuring of the names of the prime minister and his children in the offshore companies in the Panama Papers disclosures. However, within days the whistleblower had to exclude the premier’s name as it never existed in the scam. As the scandal was busted, the government became extremely nervous and scared. But with the passage of time, it gained confidence. It apparently heaved a sigh of relief when the matter was taken up by the Supreme Court due to the petitions sponsored by the PTI and others.

With the postponement of the hearings for a month owing to the retirement of the chief justice and winter vacation of the top court, the government became further relaxed and comfortable with the bench observing that it has not got sufficient evidence from either side to punish the defendants.

Nawaz Sharif also survived a severe health issue and had to leave Pakistan and stay in Britain in connection with the heart surgery for a long time with his detractors engaged in a lethal propaganda, some even mercilessly doubting that he was actually operated upon. This was height of nastiness and spite.

Hardly any government in the recent history was subjected to so much toxic propaganda and disinformation that the incumbent one faced. There was never ever an iota of doubt in any official circle that the poisonous allegations hurled over the prime minister that he was soft on India and even a security risk for Pakistan were being sponsored by hidden hands that were out to destabilize him for their nefarious designs. An unremitting orchestrated campaign was also run through the mouthpieces, disguising as TV anchorpersons and analysts.

The whole year of 2016 was marked with lots of conspiracies and plots, projected by predictors of doomsday for the government. They did unparalleled mud-slinging and smearing without any check or balance, or a modicum of morality or a sense of responsibility. Some of them were so unabashed and brazen that they did not express a word of remorse or repentance when their forecasts turned out to be untrue. If 2016 further exposed the PTI and its handlers, ultimately waning the power and strength of this party, and entrenched the government well, the year turned out to be the biggest shame and failure of the forecasters, conspirators, plotters and schemers. At the end of the day, democracy won and machinations to demolish it stood rocked.